


Fly

by orlesiantitans



Series: 100 Themes [28]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Inquisition, Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: F/M, Fluff and Angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-23
Updated: 2016-06-23
Packaged: 2018-07-16 17:43:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 702
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7277680
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orlesiantitans/pseuds/orlesiantitans
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Elissa was a little girl, she wanted to fly. Her mother had laughed in that way mothers do and told her that perhaps she would one day, and from that moment on the young girl had announced she would be a brave Grey Warden, and would ride a griffon into battle when she was older. She once did that during a landsmeet, and the Prince had snickered, the King had laughed, and her father had rolled his eyes and apologized to court.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fly

When Elissa was a little girl, she wanted to fly. Her mother had laughed in that way mothers do and told her that perhaps she would one day, and from that moment on the young girl had announced she would be a brave Grey Warden, and would ride a griffon into battle when she was older. She once did that during a landsmeet, and the Prince had snickered, the King had laughed, and her father had rolled his eyes and apologized to court.

 

(She didn’t hide her pleasure when she got a carved toy griffon from the King for her birthday). 

 

As she grew, she sobered. The revelation at age seven that the griffons were extinct broke her little heart, and she’d done as her mother requested and attempted to be a little more feminine (though she still fought- she refused to be a good little lady who stayed home). She bulked up, began to best even her brother in combat, shamed Gilmore, and discovered what it meant to be a warrior. She was capable at age sixteen, and by seventeen was being considered as Teyrna- a position she would turn down in a heartbeat. Fergus, he was good at the politics. She would defend Highever, but she would not rule it. 

 

She would have defended Highever to her last breath, that fateful night where she left a castle of her family dead, where she spent hours kneeling in the dirt with her mabari, tears mixing with rain as they streamed down her face, mud seeping into her breeches and blonde strands sticking to her face as her home created a beacon in the darkness. Fate was cruel- she was the Grey Warden she dreamed of being, but at such great cost. She would give anything to return to where she had been. Frustrated and rebellious, but happy. With people who loved her, with people she loved in return. Duncan pulled her to her feet, took her away, and her heart ached with every step she took.

 

The deaths of the Wardens did not hit her as hard as it might have- the loss of her family too raw for anything else to affect her. But there was the boy- the man- who thawed her heart, soothed the wound. She fell for him, his clumsy kisses and touches, the man who stood with her battle after battle, the man who became her King one bright day in Bloomingtide, hands clasped as they promised themselves to one another, her heart soaring without her needing a way to fly. 

 

Only for it to leave her again as she left Denerim. They needed an heir, but beyond that- they needed to  _ live _ . She did not possess Wynne’s bravery when facing death- and regardless of the decades she had left, she would not lose Alistair- and he would not lose her. 

 

And so she went in search of a cure. Anyone who would give her clues, anything she could find out. Dragon’s blood, she discovered, was the best way to go about it (and this meant an incredibly awkward visit to Skyhold where she had to sit through pomp and ceremony before she got even a moment alone with Lord Inquisitor Trevelyan, who pleasantly agreed to go and kill one last dragon with her). 

 

It was during this time, in 9:42 Dragon, Corypheus dead and gone, dragon blood in her bag, that she heard of thirteen young griffon hatchlings that had been found. As Warden-Commander of Ferelden, she felt it prudent to look into it herself, and when one came up to her, large for it’s young age and sniffling at the air, she smiled. When it nuzzled into her, choosing her, she returned the embrace, and began her way back to Denerim, on the back of her chosen mount, eyes wide as the clouds passed her by, soaring in every way possible, eyes wide and arms out to the side, a position that continued when she greeted her husband. 

  
(And she certainly didn’t hide her pleasure when both of them arrived to an Orlesian ball on the back of a griffon- if Celene didn’t like them before, their alliance was certainly strained after that)


End file.
